1351: Alcohol | Skeptical Sunday

9:07Jordan Harbinger:Surfing is stressful.

9:08Jessica Wynn:It doesn't sound like something that would be relaxing for me. My policy is to stay out of the water. I prefer to stay on the boat. I'm good. So yeah, it does sound like maybe you could use a drink or at least throw one on your heel and disinfect that thing. Oh man, it would be nice. Are you walking around or are you like, yeah, now I'm staying off that foot because I got an arrowhead in it.

9:28Jordan Harbinger:It was really sore. And then I went for a bike ride yesterday and it became pretty apparent something was horribly wrong. Oh my gosh.

9:37Jessica Wynn:Yeah.

9:37Jordan Harbinger:I think there's just barb in my foot. I have to get removed. So.

9:41Jessica Wynn:You should ask if you can see what was in there. I'm one of those guys who's like, if I ever get anything stuck in my body, shrapnelable. Oh, I want to keep it. Yeah.

9:48Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, me too. Me too.

9:49Jessica Wynn:If I get barbed with a stingray. It's like, you're not just going to throw that away. No, sir. That's going in one of those little vials that I can keep on a shelf in the studio somewhere or make a necklace out of. I don't know.

10:00Jordan Harbinger:I know. I wish I could catch the jerk.

10:01Jessica Wynn:Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, for me, I'm kind of like, well, you did step on. It's not his fault. All right. Speaking of drinks on Skeptical Sunday, we're breaking down alcohol. You don't have to go far to find a drink these days. Bars, bodegas, grocery stores, airports, airplanes, sporting events, funerals, apparently maybe for Irish people, I don't know, and baby showers for some reason. It's everywhere. It's the only drug that's woven into nearly every ritual of Western adult life, and it works. It changes your behavior. That's not controversial. In fact, that's kind of the point. But the more you drink, the less flattering those changes get.

10:37Jessica Wynn:So what exactly are we doing to our bodies and to our brains? Why is this one substance not just accepted and tolerated, but basically expected? And when something is this normalized, who benefits? To unpack the chemistry behind your happy hour is writer and researcher Jessica Wynn. So, Jess, should we all, I don't know, grab a drink for this conversation? Sounds like it might be kind of heavy.

10:57Jordan Harbinger:You might go either way with this one, but I'll have to pass. I haven't had a drink in years. But let me ask you something. Imagine a world where alcohol doesn't exist. And then some company walks into the FDA with a brand new recreational drug. They say it's highly addictive. It's a group one carcinogen. Same category as asbestos. It'll kill about two and a half million people globally each year. It'll play a role in nearly half of all violent crimes in the United States. 37 % of sexual assaults for the general population, a whopping 90 % on college campuses, and will cause over 12 ,000 traffic deaths annually.

11:39Jordan Harbinger:Oh, and it can cause severe fetal development disorders. And we'd like to sell it everywhere. Airports, stadiums, corner stores, gas stations. There'll be bright packaging, great branding, sexy ads. You know, do you think that drug gets approved?

11:54Jessica Wynn:That drug doesn't even get past the receptionist, I hope.

11:57Jordan Harbinger:But here we are. That drug exists. You can buy it right now.

12:01Jessica Wynn:Okay.

12:01Jordan Harbinger:Most people have some in their fridge or on their shelf, and almost no one questions it.

12:07Jessica Wynn:Man, all right, slow down, because I think a lot of people, including people who drink regularly, don't actually know what alcohol is, maybe in the medical sense.

12:15Jordan Harbinger:Right, absolutely. You know, strip away the vineyard story and the craft brewery branding, and what you're ingesting is ethanol. It's a psychoactive central nervous system depressant, and it's toxic to every organ system in the body. And it's classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the WHO, as a group one carcinogen, which means there's sufficient evidence that it causes cancer in humans. Not might cause, causes.

12:48Jessica Wynn:Group one. So top shelf danger.

12:51Jordan Harbinger:Top shelf, right? Asbestos is group one. Plutonium is group one. And alcohol is group one. And most people just have no idea.

13:02Jessica Wynn:I want to be clear here because a lot of people are like, oh, this is a political thing. We're not talking about the schedule one drugs where somebody in the government is like, marijuana is as harmful as heroin because reasons. This is a medical term, right? Where they're like, here's the harm it causes. And the most harm is caused by plutonium, asbestos and alcohol, among other substances.

13:22Jordan Harbinger:Correct. Yeah, this is just scientific classification.

13:24Jessica Wynn:Yeah, because when I first heard that, I was like, ah, somebody just put that in there for political. And then I was like, oh, wait, that's not the same thing as Schedule 1, Schedule 2. We're like, because LSD, I think, was or is Schedule 1. And it's like, yeah, you could probably take a little bit of that every day and you'd just be a hippie. And I say a little bit because you don't want to take too many mushrooms or LSD. That does work on your brain. By the way, not a doctor. I feel like I need to say that in every episode, but especially right now in this one. So, okay, if I told someone there was asbestos in my kitchen cabinets and, you know, help yourself, the dinner party ends pretty quickly, I think.

13:57Jessica Wynn:So, but somehow this is the thing that you bring to dinner to share with everyone, right? Imagine bringing a plate of asbestos for everybody to dig into. Right.

14:05Jordan Harbinger:And that gap between what the science says and what people believe, it's not an accident.

14:12Jessica Wynn:Do you think people were deliberately taught to see alcohol differently than the evidence supports?

14:17Jordan Harbinger:Yes, definitely. And the result is that drinkers are exposing themselves to at least seven different cancers with every sip.

14:26Jessica Wynn:Lucky number seven. Okay.

14:27Jordan Harbinger:Lucky seven. Right. I mean, and that's at minimum. So there's mouth, throat, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum, and breast cancer. And the breast cancer link in particular is one of the most well-established causal relationships in cancer epidemiology and one of the least talked about.

14:48Jessica Wynn:When you say causal relationship, what are we talking about? Like those people who drank a fifth of vodka every day kind of consumers?

14:55Jordan Harbinger:Unfortunately not. The cancer risk starts rising with any consumption. So there's no threshold where it drops to zero. In 2023, the WHO finally stated this clearly. There is no safe level of alcohol consumption when it comes to cancer risk. No safe level.

15:16Jessica Wynn:That is not how this has been marketed to us at all. Yeah. Wow.

15:21Jordan Harbinger:No, and most people are convinced of the narrative that a glass of red wine is basically preventative medicine.

15:29Jessica Wynn:I can't tell you how many times I've heard like wine is good for your heart. It's got resveratrol in it or whatever. I'm probably mispronouncing that because I'm going off memory. But it's like, oh, look at the French. They smoke and they drink. And it's because the red wine has this magical ingredient in it that you can buy on Amazon in a pill.

15:46Jordan Harbinger:That's just part of alcohol's armor, right? I mean, you can't criticize it without immediately hearing, you know, it's cultural, it's tradition. Those French are doing great.

15:56Jessica Wynn:Yeah, it's cultural and it's tradition. It's like, oh, you mean like stoning people who've been sexually assaulted? That's also cultural. Do we want to lean into that too? I don't know. Yeah, the French don't do that, by the way. I'm not confused there. Anymore. Anymore. Correct. Yes, they burn people at the stake. Or am I out of date here? Yeah. But the French always win these kinds of arguments, right? Smoking, butter, wine.

16:23Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. And look, that cultural history is real. Humans have been fermenting things for at least 10 ,000 years. Alcohol is thought to be the very first recipe. So it shows up in ancient religious rituals, early medicine in literally every civilization we know. But it was really to because we couldn't drink the dirty water, you know, alcohol, the only group one carcinogen you're expected to bring to a baby shower.

16:52Jessica Wynn:We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Revolve Man. I've never been a guy who spends hours shopping for clothes, but I do like looking like I had my life together. That's why I've been shopping at Revolve Man. Revolve Man is stocked with elevated essentials and trend forward styles from brands like Solomon. one of my favorite shirts right now is actually a Solomon shirt I picked up there, and a bunch of other brands that strike the balance between looking sharp and not trying too hard, which is never a good look on a 46-year-old man. What I really like is how curated the site feels.

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18:55Jordan Harbinger:Wayfair, every style, every home.

18:57Jessica Wynn:Don't forget about our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. It is a practical read under two minutes just about every Wednesday with a little bit of wisdom from a past episode from us to you. Very practical. Something you can apply right away. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. I'm sure it was also an accident, right? You pick a bunch of fruit, you leave it in some sort of stone bowl, and then later on you're like, I forgot I put this in here, and you're like, dang, bro, what is going on with this? and look, I discovered alcohol for myself as a kid because it was probably like November or December and I was playing in the basement.

19:35Jessica Wynn:My parents never went down there, but we had a second refrigerator down there, like one of those 1950s fridges that my parents had for whatever reason kept and it was like from when my dad was a kid probably used more power than every other item in the house put together. But anyway, they bought apple cider. I loved apple cider. And since it was these huge jugs, they kept, I don't know, one or two jugs in the fridge upstairs and then they're like, oh, let's put this third jug in the basement with all the pop, which is what we call soda in Michigan. And I found this jug of unopened apple cider in, you know, around Christmas time, maybe.

20:06Jessica Wynn:And I remember it was all puffy in the little dent in the jug that's supposed to keep the shape of the jug. That thing was popped out. And I was like, whoa, this is crazy. So I opened it and it went right. That that sound you get when you open a two liter bottle of Coke. And I was like, what's that. So of course I took a sip and it was carbonated. And I was like, whoa. And it had bite. And I drank the entire jug in basically one sitting while playing Legos. And my parents later on, they were like, you know, come up for dinner. And I came up and they were like, what the hell is wrong with you? And I was like, I don't know, whatever.

20:43Jessica Wynn:And they're like, my dad's like, were you drinking my beer? And I was like, no. And he's like, let me smell your breath. And he's like, it doesn't smell like beer. It smells like apples. And I was like, Like I told you, I drank cider and my parents went and got the empty jug and they sniffed it. And they were like, oh my God, dude, I think this fermented and Jordan drank it. And I was like, yeah, I drank the whole thing. Wow. And I was probably like 12 or 11 years old, right? So I drank a gallon of fermented to a certain point, like lightly fermented enough to be carbonated cider. So of course, ancient man finds this and is like, all right, we got to make more of this.

21:17Jessica Wynn:Because I was like, mom, can you buy more cider? And she was like, absolutely not. I know what you're thinking. We are not doing this.

21:23Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, you couldn't stop. That's really funny. In nature, there's been studies where somewhere out in the Sahara or something, there's two watering holes and one will be really full and the other one will be really depleted, have very little water. But all these animals are around the one with minimal liquid and they realize, oh, that's the one closest to a fruit tree. So the fruit's falling in that puddle and fermenting and the animals are like, hell yeah, we'd rather fight for this. It's funny.

21:54Jessica Wynn:You mentioned that I was looking at some documentary the other day and I had to chat GPT this because I saw I think it was like there were lions, I think, drinking at the same watering hole at the exact same time as I don't know, gazelles or one of those. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, this thing spends the whole day running away from lions because it will get murdered. And here it is with its kids. And the lion's like, hey, man, good morning, you know, And they're just drinking. And it's like they just sort of have like a pause in hostilities because they're like, everybody's got to have a drink in the morning.

22:24Jordan Harbinger:Got to be nice at the bar. That's right.

22:25Jessica Wynn:So it's kind of like, oh, you know what? We're all having our morning tipple, as the Brits call it. And so, yeah, they're just like you kind of have this image in your Disney image in your head of a gazelle with its armor on the line being like, and then I says to him, you know, as they're drinking smashed up fermented fig water in the middle of the desert.

22:45Jordan Harbinger:Why can't we just be friends?

22:46Jessica Wynn:That's right. I've been running and running and running, and I've thought to myself, why don't we get to know each other a little bit? Yeah. The thing is, this shows up, like you said, in early medicine, rituals, whatever, but that's not a health argument, you know?

23:00Jordan Harbinger:Right, of course. I mean, ancient societies also didn't have germ theory or whatever, you know? I mean, they used mercury as medicine.

23:09Jessica Wynn:Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Drink some of this Quicksilver.

23:12Jordan Harbinger:Right, exactly. So longevity of use tells you something became cultural, not that it's safe.

23:19Jessica Wynn:It's kind of like cigarettes, right? Like your throat hurts. You know what? Have a Marlboro. This is my cigarette of choice when my throat hurts. Yeah, leaded gasoline, also part of American culture. We did not keep it because of tradition.

23:31Jordan Harbinger:Right. And when people say alcohol is part of our culture, what they're really repeating, whether they know it or not, is the narrative a two trillion dollar industry has spent enormous time and resources embedding into the public consciousness.

23:47Jessica Wynn:Yeah. So we've been led to believe moderate drinking is heart healthy. How many articles were there in the early aughts about the benefits of red wine? And even I remember Tim Ferriss being like, yeah, I drink a bottle of red wine every day or something. And sorry, Tim, if I'm getting that wrong. But, you know, it was like, oh, there's resveratrol in it. And he wrote about that, I think, in The Four Hour Chef. And it just is that all just made up?

24:10Jordan Harbinger:It's not entirely made up, but it's been heavily distorted. The original studies had major methodological flaws. The biggest is what's called the sick quitter problem. So when researchers compared moderate drinkers to non-drinkers, the non-drinker group often included people who had already stopped drinking because of health problems.

24:34Jessica Wynn:Oh, okay. So the non-drinker group sometimes included people whose doctor basically said, you need to stop drinking immediately because you're going to die.

24:42Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, exactly. Which can make moderate drinkers look artificially healthier by comparison. And once you control for that, the cardiovascular benefit of moderate drinking, it just completely disappears. And when researchers use stronger methods, like Mendelian randomization, which uses genetics to stimulate randomized trials. The cardiovascular benefit claims were substantially weakened and the protective effect essentially just vanished. And those studies have been available for years, slowly shifting the scientific consensus towards no safe level.

25:19Jessica Wynn:So if the science has shifted, why are people still being told red wine is good for them?

25:24Jordan Harbinger:Because it's more appealing. You know, ongoing studies try really hard to find some signal there's reduced heart disease with low level consumption. So it's technically not fully debunked. Studies that suggest harm don't get the same attention or the same funding. And really, it's more fun to bring a flask of wine to your kid's soccer game and just be normal.

25:49Jessica Wynn:That's a bit much, but well, OK, I'm sure it's done regularly. I wonder who benefits from the whole wine is medicine story. I mean, this really does, now that you mention it, remind me of how cigarettes were just like, you know, nine out of 10 doctors recommend Winston's.

26:03Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, of course. I mean, we know who benefits, right?

26:06Jessica Wynn:Yeah, but we treat alcohol companies very differently than we treat tobacco or pharmaceuticals, even though the harm profile clearly overlaps.

26:14Jordan Harbinger:Right. I mean, it's a staggering double standard. So the global alcohol industry is worth roughly two trillion dollars. It's heavily lobbied and has used, you know, very deliberately and with remarkable precision, the same playbook as big tobacco.

26:31Jessica Wynn:The same playbook. So literally the same tactics and everything?

26:35Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, literally. It's the same PR firms, the same consultants, same strategies. When the tobacco industry was under pressure in the 70s and 80s, they funded favorable research. They created doubt about scientific consensus. They lobbied aggressively against warning labels and invented the concept of what was called personal responsibility as a regulatory shield. So every single one of those tactics has been used by the alcohol industry. Drink responsibly, everyone. Yeah, right. That phrase was invented by the alcohol industry. It wasn't a public health message. It was a legal strategy. So it shifts the blame to the consumer.

27:18Jordan Harbinger:So if something goes wrong, it's your failure, not the predictable result of a highly addictive product being aggressively marketed. You know, it's one of the most successful PR moves in modern corporate history because it puts the liability on the drinker and removes the manufacturer from the conversation. They're not going to pay your DUI fines.

27:40Jessica Wynn:Right. That is genuinely enraging. I mean, we've all said it. They got us to be the spokespeople.

27:46Jordan Harbinger:Right. I mean, that's how effective it is. And the industry also funds a significant amount of its own research. So there's a well-documented pattern of industry-funded alcohol studies producing more favorable conclusions. And the studies that generated the moderate drinking health narrative were just disproportionately funded by the industry or by foundations with industry ties.

28:12Jessica Wynn:So the research that told us wine was good for our hearts was...

28:16Jordan Harbinger:It was paid for by the people selling the wine.

28:19Jessica Wynn:Right, okay.

28:19Jordan Harbinger:And there was a spectacular case in 2018 where the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, they shut down a major clinical trial on drinking because industry representatives had been involved in the design of the study and in recruiting industry funding for it. That's not how science is supposed to work.

28:41Jessica Wynn:Agreed. That sounds less like scientific research and more like branding. And the branding wasn't neutral, right? Alcohol companies, they targeted women very deliberately. Right.

28:51Jordan Harbinger:And this is the story I think most people are genuinely unaware of. And it's one of the clearest examples of that deliberate market expansion. So starting in the 1990s, alcohol companies made a strategic push towards women. Wine in particular was positioned as sophisticated, empowering, even a form of self-care. There was a messaging shift, right? Girls night, mommy juice, rosé all day, all those things.

29:18Jessica Wynn:All of which sound like the title of a WhatsApp friend group chat, right? Right, exactly. But came from marketing departments. And by the way, y 'all, I just texted Tim to check on that. And he's like, no, that would not be me because you'd need to drink dozens of bottles of wine to get the needed trans resveratrol, I think. And so that's basically he makes the same point that we're making.

29:38Jordan Harbinger:Exactly. Yeah. There's always a kernel of truth, right?

29:41Jessica Wynn:Right. Yeah.

29:42Jordan Harbinger:But those mantras and phrases and things, they were engineered. The wine mom cultural phenomenon, it didn't organically emerge, right? It was built and it worked. Drinking rates among women rose, especially middle-aged women. At the same time, alcohol-related liver disease and deaths among women increased.

30:02Jessica Wynn:And layered on top of that is the breast cancer link.

30:05Jordan Harbinger:Right, which is definitely worth repeating. So it's one of the most well-established causal relationships in cancer research. Among women, the more alcohol consumed, the higher risk of breast cancer. So this isn't a fringe finding. It's been replicated across hundreds of studies that focus on women. I know men can get breast cancer too, but the studies I came across were just looking at women. in multiple countries over decades. And for years, this finding exists alongside marketing, telling women that, you know, it's wine o 'clock somewhere.

30:41Jessica Wynn:Yeah, man, that's just, it's dark and the industry knows.

30:45Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, and the evidence has been available for a long time. And there were documented efforts to challenge, discredit, or bury this breast cancer link, very similar to how Big Tobacco handled lung cancer research.

30:57Jessica Wynn:But the marketing can still happen because they put warning labels on bottles like don't drink if you're pregnant, don't drink and drive. And you see those signs of those little symbols at the liquor store sometimes.

31:07Jordan Harbinger:I know. And in the U.S., those labels haven't been updated in at least 35 years since 1988. There's no mention of cancer anywhere on the alcohol warning labels.

31:19Jessica Wynn:So we update our iPhones every year, but not alcohol warnings since I was in elementary school.

31:25Jordan Harbinger:Right. And during that time, the evidence linking alcohol to cancer, it's only strengthened. And the industry has consistently lobbied against adding cancer warnings to labels.

31:36Jessica Wynn:Poison the consumer. Yeah, that's a solid business model, actually, in 2026 and for the last couple hundred years.

31:43Jordan Harbinger:Right. I mean, it's more accurate than people want to admit. You know, the alcohol industry depends on addiction. A relatively small percentage of consumers account for a huge share of sales. So roughly the top 10 percent of drinkers consume over 60 percent of the alcohol. The exact figures vary by data set and country, but they all land between 10 and 20 percent. So the business model depends on heavy drinkers, many of whom have alcohol use disorder or AUD, which is the medical term for problematic or compulsive drinking. Most people would call it alcoholism.

32:27Jessica Wynn:So your best customers are the people struggling the most. So when they say drink responsibly, they mean, well, not too responsibly.

32:33Jordan Harbinger:Right, exactly. I mean, it's a deeply hypocritical slogan built into the system. And the industry studies heavy drinkers. They understand and design products around what drives consumption, pricing, packaging, and marketing.

32:50Jessica Wynn:All right. So what does alcohol actually do to your brain? Because I think most people, they think it relaxes you. And if you overdo it, you get sloppy. But, you know, what else?

32:59Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, I mean, that's the surface version. but alcohol primarily acts on GABA receptors, which are the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter system. So it's basically the brake pedal for anxiety and stress response. And alcohol enhances that effect, which is why people feel calmer at first. But it also affects dopamine, which is our reward system. And over time, it disrupts the brain's ability to regulate stress on its own. So what happens with chronic drinking is that your baseline anxiety increases and natural dopamine response decreases and people start needing alcohol just to feel normal.

33:43Jordan Harbinger:You know, the brain literally reorganizes around alcohol.

33:47Jessica Wynn:So the thing marketed as stress relief becomes stress maintenance.

33:50Jordan Harbinger:For many people, yeah. I mean, there's another piece people don't realize, which is our sleep. So alcohol knocks you out, but it suppresses REM sleep, which is the stage tied to emotional processing and memory consolidation. So you may wake up thinking you slept, but neurologically, you did not get restorative sleep.

34:12Jessica Wynn:So tonight's nightcap is stealing tomorrow's sanity.

34:15Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, and over time, this is linked to higher rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and significantly elevated suicide risk. So alcohol becomes the coping tool and the accelerant.

34:28Jessica Wynn:That sounds like the thing people use to manage stress. It just slowly becomes the reason that they are stressed.

34:34Jordan Harbinger:Right. I mean, it is. And the particularly cruel part is that the people most vulnerable to this neurological hijacking are often already under stress. They have trauma history, financial instability and untreated mental health conditions.

34:49Jessica Wynn:Yeah, that's a brutal feedback loop. So what does treatment look like? Because drinking is everywhere. So where's recovery?

34:56Jordan Harbinger:It's pretty bleak. So tens of millions of Americans meet criteria for alcohol use disorder, but only a small fraction receive treatment. And there are real barriers. There's stigma. There's cost. There's lack of trained providers. There's also, I mean, drinking is everywhere, so nobody really thinks they have a problem. And there's also a genuine shortage of treatment options that work.

35:23Jessica Wynn:Nothing says wellness culture like poisoning yourself out of a novelty glass that says mommy juice. We'll be right back.

35:53Jessica Wynn:insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. This episode is sponsored in part by QuiltMind. If you're running a business, you're building a career, you're trying to stay relevant in your industry, LinkedIn is not optional anymore. It's where decision makers hang out, not just recruiters and hiring managers, but investors, collaborators, potential clients. And whether you realize it or not, they are checking you out. And that's why I've been working with QuiltMind. For me, it wasn't just about chasing likes or building a huge audience. It was about making the right people take me seriously and getting noticed.

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36:52Jessica Wynn:If you're on Reddit, join us on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. We discuss the episodes, the ideas from the show, the show in general, and there's some dank memes in there as well. If you're a Redditor, come join us on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. I for sure drank too much in my 20s. Like, way too much. Because my friends were doing it, and I didn't even really like it most of the time, but then it was like, oh, okay, well, if we're all going to go out to this place that I hate, I'm just going to get really drunk. I'm like, why not? And then you're kind of like, hey, Jordan, oh my God, bro, you fell asleep in the pool chair last night.

37:26Jessica Wynn:And you're like, ah, ha, ha, ha. And you're not like, hey, that's a huge red flag that I have a problem with alcohol. And like your buddy falls asleep and like pukes or something in the kitchen. And you're like, whatever, you know, because you're stupid and 25. And you don't think like, hey, he's done that every single weekend once or twice, that's not good. You're just like, everybody's doing it. You know, it's just so dumb. It's like if you're around probably people who are shooting up heroin all the time, you're like, whatever, these people are all fine. It's like, because you get up and go to work the next day, you're like, it can't be that bad, right?

37:58Jordan Harbinger:There's always somebody that seems worse than you too.

38:01Jessica Wynn:Yes, oh, that's a good point, right? Yeah, like, oh man, Tom, he's kind of an alcoholic. Yeah, he did fall off the balcony and break his leg and he's back drinking in his wheelchair today. And you're like, oh, yeah, he's he's a little bit of a mess. And as you say that, as you like are doing your 21 shots because it's your birthday and projectile vomiting and having to go get your stomach pumped. And you're like, whatever. It's my birthday.

38:24Jordan Harbinger:I'm not Tom. Yeah, at least I'm not Tom.

38:26Jessica Wynn:I didn't get injured this time. OK, so you mentioned there's a genuine shortage of treatment options that work. So what treatment options are there? I just figured there's tons of stuff. I don't pay attention to this.

38:36Jordan Harbinger:Nobody really pays attention to it. But there are FDA-approved medications like naltrexone. That's shown to significantly reduce cravings and relapse rates. But most primary care doctors, they just never prescribe it. And most patients never know it exists. How honest are you with your doctor about your alcohol?

38:56Jessica Wynn:Sure.

38:56Jordan Harbinger:Naltrexone does have hepatotoxicity risks at higher doses and may not be great for your liver, which is a bummer. But naltrexone and another called acomprosate are FDA approved. They're clinically proven and dramatically under prescribed for alcohol use disorder.

39:15Jessica Wynn:OK, so we have the tools, but we don't use them, I guess. And meanwhile, the industry spends billions of dollars making sure people encounter alcohol constantly.

39:24Jordan Harbinger:I mean, constantly. And that's the inverse, right? Billions spent to start the problem. Pennies spent to solve it.

39:31Jessica Wynn:And just to underline what we said earlier, we're structuring entire social lives around something that increases cancer risk at all levels of consumption.

39:38Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, that's not to be debated. So the global burden of disease studies consistently rank alcohol among the leading risk factors for death and disability worldwide, especially for people between 15 and 49.

39:54Jessica Wynn:And meanwhile, every major celebration in society is basically sponsored by it. New Year's Eve, weddings, sports, office parties.

40:02Jordan Harbinger:Happy hour, just being done work, right? But we built social life around a substance that public health researchers consistently rank as extraordinarily harmful. But it's really fun. So that contradiction has become so normalized, most people barely notice it.

40:21Jessica Wynn:I want to talk about fetal alcohol syndrome because I feel like we know the name and then we just kind of move on. What are we actually talking about?

40:28Jordan Harbinger:Right. So that there is a warning on the label. But if you're not pregnant, you're not seeing it. Right. So fetal alcohol spectrum disorders or FASD are entirely preventable and vastly underdiagnosed. So they're caused by alcohol exposure during pregnancy, and they result in a range of physical, cognitive, and behavioral disabilities that last a lifetime. So a 2018 JAMA study across U.S. communities found 1.1 to 5 % of first graders have FASD. Oh, my God. It's a lot. And the CDC estimates FASD affects about two to five percent of school age children in the U.S. So this makes it one of the most common causes of intellectual disability.

41:17Jordan Harbinger:And it's entirely preventable. Yet we rarely see it discussed in the context of alcohol's overall harm profile. Then we look at these children and often we just give them more drugs to fix their problems.

41:32Jessica Wynn:Yeah, but that certainly complicates the whole glass of wine is self-care for mom's narrative, eh?

41:38Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, I know. And it would put enormous pressure on the industry to be clearer about the risks during pregnancy, but they just fight against it.

41:47Jessica Wynn:My mom talks about when she was pregnant with me, she's like, I didn't drink anything. And I'm like, yeah, OK, thank you. Duh. And she's like, no, you don't get it. Pretty much everyone thought that having wine or something like that when you were pregnant was totally fine.

41:59Jordan Harbinger:Was totally fine. If you have the craving, just have it. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy.

42:03Jessica Wynn:I don't know. Maybe if you have a glass here and there, I don't really know. It seems like probably a bad idea. But yeah, I think other people just kept on drinking like they always did because they were like, whatever.

42:12Jordan Harbinger:And smoking, too. Oh, and smoking.

42:14Jessica Wynn:Right. Yeah. My mom was not a smoker, but a lot of her friends were. And they smoked when they were pregnant. Yeah, it's crazy. So let's talk about violence, because I think this is the part that gets almost completely disconnected from the alcohol conversation in public discourse.

42:26Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, that's another remarkable disconnection. So alcohol is a factor in roughly 40 to 60 percent of violent crimes in the United States, depending on which study you look at. It's present in a significant proportion of sexual assaults. It's involved in about 13 ,000 traffic fatalities every year. I mean, these are enormous numbers.

42:49Jessica Wynn:Wow. 13 ,000 traffic fatalities. So if a car company's engineering defect caused 13 ,000 traffic fatalities, you'd have congressional hearings every week. I mean, you wouldn't be. Yeah, that would never stand.

43:00Jordan Harbinger:Right. And that's the accountability gap I find most revealing. So think about how we've treated other industries whose products contribute to mass harm. Tobacco. There was litigation and settlements and massive restrictions with like opioid manufacturers. There was litigation. There were criminal convictions with that. I mean, with firearms, there's an ongoing fierce debate about liability. Remember when we were kids and they banned lawn darts because one kid died? Kind of, yeah. I don't remember if they banned it, but yeah, I remember talking about these. There's things like that. But alcohol, essentially nothing.

43:40Jordan Harbinger:And the industry has achieved near total insulation from accountability for the downstream harms of their product.

43:48Jessica Wynn:How?

43:49Jordan Harbinger:So through the personal responsibility doctrine, primarily, if someone drinks and drives, that's their crime, their fault, their moral failure. The company that produced the product, marketed it, and successfully lobbied against things like ignition interlocks and stricter alcohol liability laws, they're just absent from the conversation once you get busted.

44:12Jessica Wynn:Yeah, of course. And who bears the cause? You know, who actually absorbs the damage from alcohol-related violence?

44:17Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, mostly lower income communities and women are disproportionately affected. So domestic violence has one of the strongest alcohol correlations of any form of violence. That harm falls primarily on women and children. And traffic fatalities from drunk driving disproportionately kill people in areas with fewer public transit options, lower income, maybe more rural and less served. But the people who profit most from alcohol's cultural ubiquity are not the same people absorbing its worst harms.

44:53Jessica Wynn:When you line it up like that, it is really hard to argue that this is just a lifestyle choice with some downsides, right? Like vaping or something. We've talked about lives. What about money? Because in America, nothing gets attention until there's a dollar sign attached to it.

45:09Jordan Harbinger:Right. So the economic cost of excessive alcohol use in the United States is about$350 to$380 billion annually. Think of health care, lost productivity, criminal justice, and property damage. All of that gets factored in, and that doesn't even begin to capture the intergenerational costs. You know, children growing up in homes destabilized by alcohol abuse, educational disruption, and just long-term health burdens.

45:41Jessica Wynn:So we privatize the profit and socialize the damage. I feel like I've heard this kind of thing happening all over the place.

45:47Jordan Harbinger:I mean, that's exactly what's happening.

45:49Jessica Wynn:And I think that connects to something bigger that gets overlooked. People talk about drinking like it exists in some pure vacuum of personal choice. But alcohol is really built into the architecture of modern social life. You don't just choose alcohol. You kind of inherit a world organized around it. You didn't opt into that. It was just there when you arrived.

46:09Jordan Harbinger:Right. And there was a sociologist, Ray Oldenburg. He wrote about what he calls third places, which are social spaces outside of home and work where people, you know, casually gather and build community, like coffee shops, parks, libraries, barbershops, whatever, places where conversation, familiarity, and human connection happen without much pressure or obligation. Historically, bars and taverns were one version of that. But in many modern cities or even small towns, with the erosion of truly public spaces, Bars and alcohol-centered venues, they've become the dominant version.

46:52Jessica Wynn:Because we defunded everything else.

46:54Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. I mean, community centers, public parks, and civic spaces, they've just atrophied or been privatized. So what's left in a lot of cities is the bar. And bars work financially because they sell alcohol. So the price of admission to communal social life in many places is essentially alcohol consumption.

47:17Jessica Wynn:And if you don't drink, you kind of you're out on the social life. I mean, look, yes, you can just go out and not drink, but it's not that simple. Kind of sometimes.

47:24Jordan Harbinger:Right. I mean, and if you don't drink, you have to declare it. You have to explain yourself. You know, I don't drink is a statement that in many social contexts requires justification. You're asked why. People assume you're in recovery or, I mean, I go out a lot. And when I say I don't want to drink, it's always jokes like, oh, are you pregnant? Or, you know, do you have some health issue? The fact that you might just not want to consume a carcinogen doesn't read as a normal explanation.

47:55Jessica Wynn:Which is genuinely insane when you think about it. You don't have to explain why you don't smoke cigarettes at a party. Why aren't you smoking? Nobody asks that unless you just quit last week and somebody's confused.

48:05Jordan Harbinger:Right, right. And tobacco only got to that place through decades of public health pressure, lawsuits and cultural backlash. Alcohol just hasn't had that moment yet. And class changes the whole picture, too. So for wealthy people, drinking gets framed as sophisticated and curated with, you know, wine tastings and mixology or craft brewery tours. So those are leisure activities for people with disposable income. For poorer communities, the consequences from addiction to alcohol-related deaths, they tend to land harder and stay visible longer.

48:45Jessica Wynn:So here's something I know is going to happen after this episode airs. People are going to be defensive, right? And not just reflexively. People who are genuinely smart and thoughtful are going to push back. Why is this topic so resistant to the kind of scrutiny we apply to other health issues?

49:00Jordan Harbinger:Well, I think a few things are happening at once. And one is identity. So people don't just drink. They see themselves as wine people or beer people or cocktail enthusiasts. So criticizing alcohol feels strangely personal, like you're criticizing them, their taste, their social life, their whole identity. And the industry has spent decades deliberately building that association.

49:28Jessica Wynn:And once people identify with the product, they start defending it instinctively. So this is how smokers reacted when smoking sections started disappearing and they had to go outside to have a cigarette. It stopped feeling like a health issue. And it kind of felt like somebody attacking their lifestyle.

49:43Jordan Harbinger:Oh, man. I mean, smokers were so offended, right? When all of a sudden you couldn't smoke in bars. I actually, this is so gross, but right when that was happening, I had just started bartending at a place. And I look back on that. And before we made people go outside to smoke, ashtrays were all over bars. And I think about how we would take those ashtrays and just put them in the same dishwasher as the glassware and stuff. Just it was so normalized. Now we would just, oh, that grosses everybody out. But yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it points to another thing. It's just the autonomy piece of all of this.

50:23Jordan Harbinger:So we live in a culture that places tremendous value on personal choice. And because alcohol is legal and socially accepted, any conversation about its harms immediately gets framed as paternalistic, like someone's trying to tell you how to live. The industry has encouraged that framing very effectively. So any health warning or regulation, this conversation you and I are having, it's just all painted as an infringement on one's rights.

50:54Jessica Wynn:Even though the industry is also telling you how to live by telling you to drink more.

50:58Jordan Harbinger:Right, exactly. That my freedom argument is conveniently invoked against public health, but never against marketing. You know, nobody says, I resent being told by a Super Bowl ad that beer will make me attractive and fun. So alcohol is like the only drug where not using it requires that explanation. And that's deeply revealing about how thoroughly the industry has captured culture. So non-drinking is treated as the like deviant choice. And if this conversation makes some listeners defensive, I genuinely invite them to sit with that defensiveness and just ask yourself, you know, where does it come from?

51:39Jordan Harbinger:Is it from my considered reflection on alcohol's place in my life? Or is it from decades of very effective messaging telling me my identity and social belonging just depend on consuming this product?

51:53Jessica Wynn:And just to head this off, this is not an argument for prohibition, right? We tried that. It went terribly. Right.

51:59Jordan Harbinger:I mean, Prohibition failed for a lot of complex social and political reasons. But people hear alcohol causes harm and immediately jump to, oh, so you want to ban it. And no, you know, public health policy is not just ban or don't ban. There's a whole spectrum in between, like warning labels, taxation and marketing restrictions. We already accept those tools for cigarettes.

52:24Jessica Wynn:It seems alcohol and your terrible sister-in-law are proof that with the right positioning, even the most toxic things can still get invited to a wedding. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Your support of our sponsors keeps us going. All of the deals discount codes and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. So we need to be asking whether the policies in place match the concern and real harm that products are causing.

52:57Jordan Harbinger:And it turns out warning labels actually work. So just this week, studies were published that fine people are much more likely to rethink their drinking when labels explicitly mention cancer risk instead of the tiny generic warning, you know, that our driving might be impaired, that we don't even really notice on the packaging.

53:18Jessica Wynn:Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. Nobody wants that reminder when they're just having a drink at happy hour. And the companies don't want to remind their customers either, obviously.

53:25Jordan Harbinger:Oh, yeah. And you can even see the economic protectionism happening in real time. So the logic gets inconsistent really fast. If we look at just hemp-derived THC drinks, you know, states like Texas and Kentucky, they've pushed crackdowns on those products, while alcohol remains widely protected and normalized. So some alcohol industry groups have openly lobbied against hemp beverages because they see them as competition and a threat because younger consumers, they are drinking way less alcohol. Huh.

54:00Jessica Wynn:So suddenly public health concerns about THC show up the minute somebody threatens, I don't know, beer sales or whatever. Right.

54:07Jordan Harbinger:Which tells you these debates are never just about health. They're about culture, profit and which industries have political protection, which in this case, it's the alcohol lobby.

54:19Jessica Wynn:So let's zoom out to policy that actually seems to work because I don't want this whole episode to just be us angrily staring at a bottle of Pinot Grigio. So do other countries have a different approach?

54:29Jordan Harbinger:It's difficult, but Scotland is probably the best case study and the clearest example. So in 2018, Scotland introduced minimum unit pricing for alcohol, basically setting a floor so the cheapest, strongest products couldn't be sold at rock bottom prices. The policy was aimed mostly at reducing heavy drinking, especially among the people at highest risk, like alcoholics and people in poverty. And it worked. Alcohol-related deaths in Scotland fell following the policy. Hospitalizations fell. The effects were most pronounced among the heaviest drinkers, you know, the people most at risk. It's amazing.

55:09Jessica Wynn:Is anything like that happening here in the U.S.?

55:12Jordan Harbinger:Well, alcohol taxes in the United States have not kept pace with inflation in most states. So the effective tax on alcohol has actually fallen in real terms, meaning it's become cheaper relative to income over time. And the industry lobbies very effectively against any increase. So no, I guess is the answer. It's not happening in the U.S. But meanwhile, we have strong evidence that price is one of the most effective levers for reducing alcohol-related harm.

55:43Jessica Wynn:Which is interesting because when people don't want us to use something, cigarettes, certain drugs, the tax and the price go way up. But for alcohol, somehow the logic reverses.

55:52Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, I mean, I think the tax on sugary drinks like soda is higher. But, you know, the difference is the lobbying power and some cultural power. So the alcohol industry is woven into agriculture, into hospitality, into local economies, into political donations in ways that create enormous resistance to any regulatory action.

56:17Jessica Wynn:How would you compare alcohol's harm profile to substances that are illegal or treated as social emergencies?

56:23Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, I mean, there's been academic work ranking drugs by harm, both harm to the individual user and then harm to others. Alcohol consistently ranks at or near the top of harm to other measures above many illegal drugs. It ranks above cannabis, above MDMA, above LSD, above most things we treat as these serious social problems. So the legal status of a substance in the United States has very little to do with its actual harm profile and very much to do with its cultural and economic embeddedness.

57:01Jessica Wynn:So we are, as a society, having the wrong conversation.

57:05Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, we're having the conversation the industry prefers, which is not about alcohol's harm profile. It's about personal responsibility, cultural heritage, and, you know, don't tell me what to do.

57:16Jessica Wynn:Right. Is anything changing? Because I've noticed anecdotally, at least, that there's more conversation about this than there used to be. You mentioned this, that the Gen Z drinks less. It does feel like the conversation is different than even 10 years ago. And I know there's sober bars now, not that I've ever been to one. In fact, I don't even, couldn't even name, it sounds fake to me. That's like a tobacco-free cigar lounge. I don't even understand. I guess they just make mocktails or something there.

57:43Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, overpriced juice, I think.

57:44Jessica Wynn:Yeah, really. Well, it's probably safer, but yeah. Right.

57:48Jordan Harbinger:But something real is happening. I mean, younger people are drinking significantly less than previous generations did at the same age. And I mean about 20 to 30 percent less. And the sober curious movement has become a genuine cultural shift. I think social media really helps that. And what's interesting is that a lot of these sober spaces, they're not built around recovery culture. They're built around wanting the social experience without the alcohol. And I think it reflects a generation that has seen the consequences of heavy drinking culture and is skeptical of it in a way that previous generations weren't.

58:26Jessica Wynn:Which gets back to that whole third space thing.

58:29Jordan Harbinger:Definitely. There's a place by me in West Hollywood. It's called The Woods. And shout out to Woody Harrelson. It's his dispensary. But in the back, there's it's the only place, I think, in L.A. where you can actually smoke weed.

58:44Jessica Wynn:Legally indoors, you mean, because everybody be smoking weed in L.A.

58:46Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, legally indoors. So in the back, he's just created this kind of, as you can imagine, like little Woody Harrelson garden. You know, there's macaws and tree houses. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, it's in a koi pond and there's a coffee bar. There's no alcohol. And it's super interesting because it functions socially like a bar. People go on dates, they meet their friends, they hang out for hours. But without alcohol being the center of gravity, you know, it's a really beautiful space. And I've noticed every time I go there, the clientele skews heavily female, which I think says something really important.

59:27Jessica Wynn:Oh, so this is like women opting out of drunk dudes being like, hey, ladies, all the time.

59:32Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. And so they're opting out of places with drunk men. And it's not all women. I will say I have gone into the woods and I've definitely never seen somebody as high as Woody Harrelson. Right.

59:48Jessica Wynn:Right.

59:48Jordan Harbinger:You know, him him and Bill Maher just sitting there smoking joints and they're very gracious in smoking. Everybody wants to give them a hit of what they're smoking. And they they take it all. It's just it's so comical to see these guys like, OK, I guess that's better that you're not just doing shots with people because you're just sitting here giggling with fans. So it's that is really cool.

1:00:10Jessica Wynn:And I feel like that's going to be somewhat short lived because if everybody starts going there to smoke a J with Bill Maher and Woody Harrelson, they're just going to make a private room where nobody can do that.

1:00:20Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. Well, I mentioned the tree houses. There are times I think when he's there, you have to reserve them. But there's no secret entrance. He walks in and out. And Bill Maher, I think, is one of the investors. And so he's there a lot. That makes sense.

1:00:33Jessica Wynn:That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The idea of getting stoned in public is nightmare fuel for me. All marijuana does for me is trigger anxiety, so I don't really use it unless I'm trying to go to sleep and I can't, like I'm worried about something or I just can't drink too much caffeine. That's the only time I would use something like cannabis, and I'm not smoking it right. I just take a gummy that's got a bunch of CBN in it just to knock me out. I don't, that whole high feeling, my brain is not wired like that. I'm not one of those guys. That's so L.A. to have a weed bar where Woody Harrelson and Bill Maher are stoned out of their minds.

1:01:07Jordan Harbinger:I wonder, though, if you were in that environment. I mean, it is curated for smoking weed. So I wonder if your anxiety would be curbed a little bit because you're in this really beautiful place with other people doing the same. I don't know. It would be interesting experiment to take you there.

1:01:22Jessica Wynn:I'd probably start talking about podcasting with Bill Maher, who probably doesn't understand podcasting, even though he has one. And then he would just get mad at me. And then I'd be really self-conscious about it if I made him mad at me. And if he's, you know, now everyone's looking at me. You know, that's that's the dialogue, man.

1:01:36Jordan Harbinger:He won't let you on Club Random unless you sit there and smoke with him during the show.

1:01:41Jessica Wynn:OK, fine. That's one exception. But I also think he would delete the episode because he'd be like, yeah. So Jordan took a couple of hits and then he just sat there looking at the lighting and was like, wow, man. What about the treatment side? What would genuine social support for people who want to stop drinking? What would that actually look like?

1:01:59Jordan Harbinger:It would look like primary care physicians routinely screening for alcohol use disorder and offering those medications. we talked about, like naltrexone, it would look like insurance coverage for treatment that's as comprehensive as coverage for other chronic conditions. It would look like the stigma around alcohol use disorder being treated like the medical condition it is, rather than the moral failing the industry has spent decades making it. So right now we spend an enormous amount on the consequences of alcohol use disorder, the emergency room visits, prison, the social services. But we spend almost nothing on treating that underlying condition.

1:02:43Jessica Wynn:What does a sober, friendly social infrastructure look like? Because I think this is the piece that's actually hardest to imagine, really.

1:02:50Jordan Harbinger:Yeah. I mean, honestly, it looks like what many cities used to have and have lost, you know, these genuinely public social spaces that don't revolve around buying alcohol. I can go to bars and shows and whatever now, but when I first stopped drinking, that was more difficult. And it is, if you're sitting around with a friend, like, what do you want to do? It's hard to find something that doesn't involve alcohol. And I think people wildly misunderstand sober communities too, especially in Los Angeles. Like, I got sober here, and it's not this depressing room of people in folding chairs, drinking bad coffee.

1:03:31Jordan Harbinger:It's a genuinely vibrant, artistic, funny community that is more supportive than any drinking buddies I ever had.

1:03:40Jessica Wynn:Which is ironic because the stereotype is that sobriety kills the party.

1:03:44Jordan Harbinger:Which is absurd. I mean, I'm a good time. But for a lot of people, it's actually the first time they've had a real social life not organized around getting wasted. And some cities are experimenting with that idea more broadly now that, like you said, there are sober bars. There's these non-alcoholic cocktail lounges, which honestly, I think are a bit of a scam just because of the prices. But they are creating these spaces that don't revolve around alcohol. There's tea rooms are becoming popular again, and just social spaces that keep the atmosphere people want without alcohol being the driving force.

1:04:22Jordan Harbinger:Don't get me wrong, it remains a niche market. But the deeper question is whether we're willing to invest in social infrastructure the same way we invest in roads and schools, because left entirely to the market, you know, we just ended up with a bar on every corner.

1:04:39Jessica Wynn:Yeah, let me say the thing I know most people are thinking, most people who drink are not alcoholics. Most people who enjoy a glass of wine and go to work and raise their kids and never crash a car on the freeway or whatever. So why frame this like a structural crisis just because some people can't handle it?

1:04:54Jordan Harbinger:Because population level harm doesn't require universal addiction. And I just want to keep reminding everybody, no level is safe health-wise.

1:05:05Jessica Wynn:Right, okay, right.

1:05:05Jordan Harbinger:So you can have a product that most people use without catastrophic consequences and still have enormous aggregate harm. So cancer risk doesn't require alcoholism. Sleep disruption doesn't require alcoholism. Violent statistics don't require everyone to be violent. Right. So the scale comes from this ubiquity.

1:05:28Jessica Wynn:So the problem isn't that everybody is spiraling. It's that everybody's participating in a system with predictable downstream damage.

1:05:35Jordan Harbinger:Exactly.

1:05:36Jessica Wynn:So if somebody's listening to this and they drink and they're not an alcoholic and they feel fine, what do you want them to take away from this?

1:05:43Jordan Harbinger:I don't want people to feel judged, first of all. I just want them to know what they're actually signing up for. For a long time, alcohol has been marketed as healthier and safer than the evidence really supports. The cancer risk, the breast cancer link, the shaky heart health claims. Most people genuinely don't know that stuff. And once you do know it, you can make your own decision.

1:06:10Jessica Wynn:That feels like a genuinely reasonable ask. Know the actual facts about the thing before you decide how much of it you want to put in your body.

1:06:16Jordan Harbinger:Yeah, it's a revolutionary concept, right?

1:06:18Jessica Wynn:Yeah. OK, so back to that alternate universe thought experiment that we started with. With all this information, we both know this product would never end up in Super Bowl ads or approved by the FDA. But alcohol actually predates the FDA, correct?

1:06:33Jordan Harbinger:Of course. Yeah. And the industry now isn't just selling you a product. It's selling a story. Wine is medicine. Drink responsibly. It's cultural. It's tradition. If you question it, you're a lame Puritan prude.

1:06:47Jessica Wynn:Okay, so those aren't neutral facts. They're narratives, and they've been so very effective.

1:06:52Jordan Harbinger:I mean, extremely effective. And that's the thing. Alcohol doesn't survive because people carefully reviewed the evidence and made a rational decision. It survives because, well, it's fun in the short term. It gets us drunk, right? But it's also woven into celebration, adulthood, dating, sports, grief, stress. Every emotion we have involves alcohol.

1:07:17Jessica Wynn:And because it's one of the only products we're questioning it, it makes you sound weird instead of the product.

1:07:21Jordan Harbinger:Right, right. Which doesn't mean nobody should drink. It just means maybe we should stop pretending this is some harmless little lifestyle accessory. when in reality, it's a multi-trillion dollar industry selling an addictive carcinogen.

1:07:36Jessica Wynn:Well, yeah, that really puts rosé all day in a different light. Maybe the real public health crisis started by convincing people brunch needed bottomless mimosas and vodka. So if you drink, now you know more. And if you don't drink, congratulations, you no longer have to pretend it's for a challenge or training or something like that. And thanks, Jess. Feel like I owe you a drink. I'll take it. And thank you all for listening. topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me, Jordan at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

1:08:10Jessica Wynn:I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Jessica on her sub stacks between the lines and where shadows linger. We'll link to those in the show notes as well. Her work is on Instagram at nevermetjessicas. This show has created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sidlouskis, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, and I'm definitely not a doctor. Also, of course, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked, so consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being.

1:08:48Jessica Wynn:Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

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